#WP vs. Excellence-Part2
3 messages in this thread
Jeff, Thanks for the info but I already know about the editors for the Amiga.
What I meant was that all screen handling is poor on the Amiga due to the OS.
Therefore, this effects even commercial software. The CLI, which I use quite
often is a joke. Even the gamma 7 version of 1.3 is still not that good. In
addition, most file requestors, even in commercial software, are very slow and
so are the screen updates. As I mentioned, the only other computer I can
compare the Amiga to is my old Atari 130XE (which has since been sold). The
Atari had both coarse and fine scrolling. The Amiga seems to rewrite the screen
every time to update it. If you click the arrows on the scroll boxes, sometimes
it continues to scroll for 10 to 12 seconds after you stop clicking. The same
when you hold a key down for any period of time. Do you know of any way to
limit the keyboard buffer to only a few characters, instead of the default 255
characters? In case you're wondering, I like the Amiga very much, am glad I
bought it, and I use it almost every day. I just wish they'd fix the problems I
mentioned. Dom Fontana
I'm not certain that you can blame slow response on the OS (except for the time
of a dirctory listing, which is ridiculous). A programmer has the choice of
several ways of refreshing/updating his display on the Amiga. If his refresh
is slow enough to irritate (and I've seen a number that are) he's just not
doing it right. I've seen some programs that update/refresh faster than I've
seen anywhere else, so I KNOW that it can be done. I feel the same way about
the input buffers. The console device and intuition buffer input. If a
program can't keep up with the input, he needs to do something about it. I
don't mean to say that there is nothing wrong with the Amiga. That isn't true.
But there is software out there that doesn't display the problems you are
referring to. I seem to remember seeing some fast text routines in the public
domain. If a programmers text output is too slow, he has no excuse.
(By the way, what are you using where you have these problems?)
Dom,
A lot of the things you don't like are implementation dependent by the
author of that software. Like the Atari, Amiga does support fine scroll.
Rewriting the screen is not necessary to update it. Stopping scroll after
releasing the mouse button on the 'arrows' can indeed be stopped immediately.
These are programming problems in the programs you are using.